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Above, stars. Twinkling and sharp. Hannibal holds the knife loose in his hand, drags his thumb over the sharp of the blade. It is memory. A stillness. Even as his heart finds a new beat, a sped-up anticipatory thump-thump.
Blood.
How he misses it. His mouth is wet. Salt. His belly tight. He lifts his gaze, the clearing, the circle of dead grasses is empty and the woods are dark.Step. His step is quiet. Predatory. He listens. Listens for the crack of unseen twigs, the compression of snow. Footsteps. Footfall. There is only silence.He goes to his haunches, looking for shadows, dips and divots, for the uneven press of heel and toe. The tip of the knife dips into a soft pile of snow. He lifts it, wiping it clean on the back of his wrist.Stands.Takes another step.There are pockets, small dents. Four circles, misshapen, too long. He glances left. Shifts, turns. His own footprints are even, measured.Human, in these too-small boots.He stands. The night has deepened and clouds cover the moon.#“Did you find them?” If Hannibal had, there would have been blood. On his hands, beneath his nails. On his tongue. Hannibal may have made a promise but self defence is not murder.Not always.“There is no them,” Hannibal says, placing the knife back on the mantle.“Then what were we hearing?” Skulking around. A weight. A shadow over this place.“Wolves.” Will turns and looks out into the inky dark. Of course there are wolves in the middle of nowhere, so far from Hannibal’s fancy china and good linens, from Will’s weatherbeaten home, all dog hair and fishing line. Of course they are being hunted.Tooth and claw.When he and Hannibal finally crawl into bed, Will notices the knife came with them.#When Will wakes it is dark and the fire low. He rolls over. Curls into warmth, into Hannibal. It is instinct. Need. Want, too, if he’s honest. Hannibal shifts and wraps an arm around the narrow of Will’s body. Murmurs something in his first language. The blankets are full of holes, dinner for moths and other small creatures.There is a memory of Hannibal’s home, but never Hannibal’s bed. Hannibal’s table. If Will, if Will follows the hallways, they always lead to the abattoir, to Abigail, the erratic, scared-rabbit pulse of her heart, the urgency of adrenaline and her blood in his hands and his hair and his mouth.Drowning does not always need water. In the dark, in the churning wet, Will had a dream of family. When Will resurfaced they were in this cabin.Will pushes at Hannibal’s shirt, flattens his palm and curls in to the sleep-warmth of Hannibal. If they don’t speak, they don’t have to talk. If they don’t talk, Hannibal won’t say—
“Do you truly forgive me now?”
It is not so simple. But this is— this nudging of Hannibal’s chin with the top of Will’s head, the way Hannibal opens his body, arms open and murmuring approval, permission. Will shuffles closer, finds Hannibal’s hand and pulls it down, shifting until Hannibal can find his cock, still soft. When Hannibal tightens his grip, Will mumbles, pushes, lifts up.“Ask me,” Hannibal says.Will shakes his head. “Am telling you.”Hannibal lets out a half laugh and strokes his thumb along Will’s thickening length. Will tucks his head, his hand on Hannibal’s forearm. Leverage. Comfort. Hannibal tightens his grip. When the blood surges and he hardens, Hannibal strokes. Intentionally. Perfunctory.Will comes in a shudder, a sudden jerk of wet over Hannibal’s fingers. The man brings the mess to Will’s mouth.Will licks Hannibal’s fingers clean. It is agreement and arrangement. Hannibal nudges Will with his nose and Will rolls over, away. Whatever Will promised in the catacombs he left in the catacombs. Hannibal sighs, a barely audible release of air. If Hannibal needs release, he can do so without Will.#There is no coffee. When they found this cabin, a dark smudge in the middle of so much dead grass, there was a bucket of old flour, stale baking powder. Hannibal makes fry bread. They eat in silence. Silence until Hannibal puts down his fork, metal on metal, on tin. Their plates are dented and rusted in places. “We need meat.”Will pushes bread around on his tongue. Takes a sip of water. “Rabbits.”“Mrrm,” Hannibal nods. “Pheasant, some ground bird.”The car they stole ran out of gas and dumped three miles away. Four miles. Will’s not even sure. “Just be back before dark.”It’s barely mid-morning. Hannibal nods and stands. He brings a hand to Will’s shoulder. Will turns his head, the edge of his jaw touching Hannibal’s fingers. “Watch out for wolves.”Hannibal leaves a kiss in his hair.#Will stands at the window like a war bride awaiting his husband’s return. Hannibal took both knives, a bit of string and some twigs from the pile outside the front door. He imagines Hannibal hunting, but hunting becomes stalking, becomes a white apron, the sharp of rosemary and the caramelized edges of new potatoes and bones. Bones and feathers. Birth, death.Will takes the dishes and washes them in brown water. Leaves them to dry.Whoever built this cabin built it without insulation. In the afternoons, after the sun is at its highest and begins its slow descent to dark, the cabin grows cold, and so Will stokes the fire and crawls back into bed where it’s warm. Fits his hand between his legs. This time he thinks of Hannibal, whispers his name, imagines Hannibal’s hands and the soft of his tongue and his cock. He comes in a gasping sigh.#There are four books in this house. Three in Russian and one in English.Will can’t read Cyrillic. Doesn’t matter, he’s writing his own story, a story of a brown haired girl fumbling to speak Italian and a silver-haired man laughing, correcting her pronunciation.Will fishing in rivers and the three of them eating by the fire. Museums and art and grandeur.Love, too. All of them washed clean of their errors and their mistakes. Choices made in blade and blood.It’s beautiful, Will had said and he’d meant it.That was the worst part of all of it. Will with blood on his hands and in his mouth and that perfect moment of understanding when there was no longer space between Hannibal and himself and the moment, the one that came later when Will realized he forgave nothing. That he had lied because he was lonely and afraid and lost and talking to a beautiful ghost of a girl.When the door opens, the sun is just barely fading.
Be home before dark.
Will puts down the book and pushes up from the chair. He kept the fire burning and the cabin is full of golden light. Bright enough. Warm enough.He turns, leaning into the chair.There are two rabbits in Hannibal’s hands, their necks loose, bodies limp. His face his blooded.Will’s first instinct is to run. Not away, but to. He curls a hand into the back of the chair and holds himself still. “Hannibal?”The man grunts and puts the rabbits on the kitchen table. “Yes.”“Your face.”Hannibal wipes the back of his hand on his cheek, smearing blood. His skin has split. “A less than cordial branch.”Will cocks his head and takes a step forward. Lifts a finger and wipes through the wet. He opens his mouth and sucks his finger clean.Hannibal frowns. “Are you checking to make sure?”Because of course Will knows precisely how Hannibal’s blood tastes. “Yes,” he says. There is a stain on the coat that wasn’t there before. But it is Hannibal’s blood. “It needs stitches.”“So you will stitch it.” The man shucks off the coat and stomps snow from his boots. Will looks out in the dusty, oncoming dark.The woods are silent.But Hannibal. Hannibal smells of salt.And a little bit like fear.#They eat rabbit. Well done, with only salt and pepper. Fry bread. It’ll be months before spring and they’ll be lucky to survive winter. Scurvy is a possibility.“There must be berries or mushrooms.” Do mushrooms grow in the cold? Musty, humid. Hannibal tilts his head. “So no mushrooms,” Will corrects. “But berries.”“I’ll find some tomorrow,” Hannibal says, turning over a bone. He picks at it, gives up and then uses his teeth. A bruise has formed on the line of his jaw. Hannibal’s the surgeon but Will is pleased with the stitches, their neatness. At least they have the med kit. Two more vials of penicillin. Vet wrap and gauze.“Eventually we’ll be unrecognizable,” Will mumbles.“I will always know it’s you,” Hannibal replies.#Will wakes to cold. A whirling, icy breeze. Hannibal is asleep, curled in what there are of blankets. Will blinks his eyes open. There are too many places where the wind slips in. Hannibal suggested mud and straw. They could melt the snow. They don’t discuss the well, the chances that it might run dry.Pushing himself from the bed, Will wanders through the house. Holds his hands out as if checking the wind’s direction. Dowsing, if he had sticks.He adds a log to the fire, he’ll have to chop wood in the morning.He pulls the book from the mantle and curls up in the chair. Drags a wool blanket over his toes. Reads, doesn’t read. Writes the story in this own mind.Abigail is talking. They sit together in Europe, in Hannibal’s Baltimore kitchen, on the floor.
Because he was my friend.
And because I wanted to run away with him.
Abigail looks at him, her eyes big and bright, the scarf at her neck stained with blood. “What do you want?” she asks.“Peace,” he whispers.She pulls at the buttons of her green jacket. “It’s quiet enough here.”Both of them know that’s not what he means.The door, loose on its hinges, bangs once. A second time. Will lifts from the chair, goes over. Just then a gust and the door swings wide. Will hops out of the way, but the edge of the door hits his elbow, sudden and sharp.“Goddamnit,” Will barks as he draws his arm in, cradling it to his chest. “The fuck are we doing, Hannibal?”Hannibal, who he left asleep in their bed.
In their bed.
He blocks the door with an old rock. Fists the blanket and goes back to the bedroom.“Will?”“Go back to sleep,” he says.“Are you all right?”Is he? “It’s just the wind.”“Come to bed,” Hannibal says, lifting the blankets. Will peels off his shirt, his pants. Tucks in, under the covers, his back to Hannibal.Sometimes there is space between them. This time Hannibal shifts closer, wraps an arm around Will’s chest.Will slips his hand beneath Hannibal’s.“Mylimasis,” Hannibal whispers.Will breathes in the cold, wintered air. This is one choice. The vast nothing outside the door is the other. It would be easy for Will to claim coercion. It would be a lie. Will is nowhere near innocent. The feel of his lover’s body brings on a familiar warmth. Desire. Will doesn’t have to forgive Hannibal to fuck him. “Hannibal.”“Hrmm.”“Roll over.”There is the smallest murmur of protest. But Hannibal rolls over. Away.“Not that far,” Will says, pulling at the mans hip.There is a pot of slick, of what passes as lube, clear and glistening. Good for burns, Hannibal told him.“Will?”“You can say no.”But Hannibal doesn’t. Will slicks up his cock, his own cock, pull and drag until he’s hard. Harder. Presses a thumb into Hannibal’s cleft, enough to widen him. There’s no preparation. Only a kiss. A single kiss to Hannibal’s shoulder before Will pushes against Hannibal, his entrance. “Breathe,” Will says and Hannibal complies and then he pushes again. Breaching. Filling. Pressing his cock deep into Hannibal. It’s better than his fist. His own hand. He rocks, rutting. Hannibal lets out small noises of pleasure.“Will-”The man called him mylimasis. Lover. This is Will’s response. “Use your own hand, Hannibal.”Will feels the shift, feels Hannibal’s body change as he begins to stroke himself.He digs fingers into Hannibal’s hip, holding him still as he works his cock. Fucks himself into Hannibal’s willing hole. It doesn’t take long. Doesn’t take long at all before Will is shuddering, shaking, filling Hannibal.Hannibal comes in a quiet breath. A single groan. Will pushes him away, draws free. Brings a hand to his own face.Wipes away a tear.#He leaves Hannibal to sleep. The sun is already rising, but there’s the matter of firewood. There’s guilt, anger. Delivered with every blow of the axe.The wood fits easily in the canvas carry-all. They have little out here in the middle of somewhere, a leaning cabin with a hole in the roof, trees growing from the eaves, leaves. When it rains it’s like a waterfall.Salt and a bar of soap. A wash bin becomes a bathtub and a bucket becomes a shower.Inside, Hannibal is making breakfast. It’ll be the same as dinner.For a moment, for the briefest of moments Will sees him as he once was. The perfect white apron tied around his waist, shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows. Smiling. Chopin or Bach. Wineglasses glinting in candlelight and Hannibal’s sheer, unbridled joy. The way he spoke of tradition, preparation, history. It was easy to believe it was not people.But it was. The rest is easier. That part, for Will, is hard to swallow.“Ah, the wood,” Hannibal says. “Can you add some to the fire, if it gets much lower it will take ages to start again.”Will grunts out agreement and rolls the carryall towards the fireplace. Does as he’s asked. Goes back to the kitchen. Hannibal is over an old, cast iron pan. “You made gravy?”Hannibal tilts his head. “If salt, pepper, fat and flour is gravy, then yes I made gravy.”“I’m sorry,” Will says.“About what?”“Last night.” This morning.“The human body is a system of complex, biological needs. While we, each of us, can manage on our own, the immune system is improved by partnered sex. We’re more likely to survive winter if we’re at least halfway healthy.”“It was unkind,” Will says.“I see it differently,” Hannibal says, flicking a bit of unseen lint from his wrist.
“You still want to go with him?” Will asks the girl at the edge of his periphery.
“Yes,” Abigail answers.
Will tucks his fingers into the hem of his blue plaid flannel.“Eat,” Hannibal says.Will sops up the thin, watery fatty gravy with a dry piece of bread. “Will you look for berries?”Hannibal nods, coming around the table with his own plate. He stops, kisses Will’s hair. “Yes. When the sun is fully up.”Will glances to the window. There’s a sudden darkening, a shadow over glass.“Will?” Hannibal leans forward.“It’s nothing,” Will answers, chewing his rabbit. He looks again to the window. “But take the knife."
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
In the months after the fall, they tried to knit back together. Their bones, studied, would look as tree trunks. Knots and rings. Knicks made by so many knives. Lovers carve hearts in weeping bark. Sometimes the sap seeps but the marks are still visible and heal into scars.Hannibal sits beside the fire. Days are counted in fallen logs, nights in sparks. Mornings in sunrises. Dinners in rabbits. There are notches on the wall. Prisoner marks, counting down the days. It’s alright, for finally neither of them are bleeding. Frustration looks the same as sadness. The way the face contorts, a grimace or a sneer and Will. Gods, he thinks, pressing fingers into his forehead, wiping away damp with his thumb. It’s not sadness. Those are not these tears. The wounds have healed. These are not those tears. Will presses berries between his fingers. Their juice is blood. Hannibal says they are not poison, but that doesn’t make them sweet.Abigail watches, perched in the corner of the room like a gargoyle. When it rains, she doesn’t get wet. Water doesn’t run over the sharp of her teeth, collect beneath her tongue. Will wipes his red-stained fingers on his jeans. Licks his thumb. A rabbit hangs from the place above the sink. Blood drips in perfect circles, dries like the rings of a tree, the rings in rock. It is the passing of time.“You forgave me,” Hannibal says, folding the t-shirt in his hands over and over again. “I remember the day the words fell from your mouth, echoing in the half-dark. Was I wrong to believe them?”In the catacombs. In the flickering candlelight. They’ve been circling each other for days, snapping at each other. Each of them taking up a specific amount of space, careful of each other’s borders. Some days are easier. Some are hard. This day has been almost impossible.Will pauses, because he knows whatever he says next will hurt. Every letter that forms every word that makes up every sentence has at least one sharp edge. They are knives on his tongue. “I forgave you so I could forget you.”“And here we are. Is this where we will finally extricate ourselves? Here at the proverbial end of the world?”Maybe they should have died, cracked into a hundred pieces against the rock. Will’s belly is a tracery of marks. A cartographer draws a map and includes a trap road. Only Hannibal knows where Hannibal has been when it comes to Will’s body. Even Will can’t remember the whole of it. There are blank rooms in his memory palace. There are doors for which he has no key.“I’ve accepted the impossibility of forgetting you,” Will says. “It would be easier for me to raise my hand above my head and wipe away the sky.”And Hannibal. Will has seen him cry. A shaking body around his shaking body, bridal carry and their wedding bed. Before that there were pools of dark blood, black in the moonlight on the night they killed the Dragon. They should have drowned but even the sea didn’t want them.Just now Hannibal is managing laundry. What Will wouldn’t give for a Fluff’n Fold, the warm smell of fabric softener, the turning thump, thump, thump of too many damp towels in a rickety machine. Hannibal is never afraid to be naked. Will is wearing a t-shirt made of nothing but holes and an old pair of pants with a flappy left leg, its hem torn as if their last owner got caught in a bear trap.Neither of them have been hunting today.“The scar on your back makes you look like supper.” The brand Mason left upon him. Such a prized hog.Hannibal turns, tilting his head as if from this angle he can also see the scar. “If you wish to consume me, I suggest you wait until I’ve had a proper bath.”“I don’t—“ Will clasps, unclasps his hands, working his jaw. “Want to eat you. I want—“ Quiet. Silence. Solitary confinement. A room without windows. A place without Hannibal Lecter.
Abigail lifts her head. Concern clouds her face. “He made a place for us.”
“Don’t remind me,” Will says to her ghost. “It makes it worse.”
Hannibal brings a hand to his own chest, near his heart. “I remember what you brought to me. I remember your hunger.”Even here, the ghost of Freddie Lounds haunts them. The body of Randall Tier. “That wasn’t long pig.”“Not that time.”No, not that time. But a time before that in a cold hotel room, a hospital bed, the morning light not enough to brighten either of their faces. “Was it even chicken soup?” Silky chicken. Star anise. What star might guide them home? Seconds tick tock between them. The hands on this particular clock are made of knives. Hannibal stokes the fire. Sparks jump, landing on the back of his hand. He brushes them away, seemingly offended by their touch. When he looks up, he’s almost smiling.“We are all sustenance, Will. You place your hand upon my shoulder to feel a sense of connection, of care. I listen to you breathe and I breathe. You step through a doorway, my body instinctively turns to give you room. You come to me in the dark expecting I will turn you away.” He pauses. “Our bodies give what we ask of them.”“You call us sustenance but we…” Will waves his hand. “We are not sustainable. Not how we were, not how we are. Now we’re nothing but stray dogs begging for scraps.”Hannibal stands. Touches the hem of a mostly-clean shirt and smoothes it over the back of a wooden chair. “I believe you can see the door from here.”Half off its hinges. The ground is already covered in a dusting of snow. What will they do when the worst of winter comes? Will wipes a hand over his chest. An hour ago Hannibal’s hands were in in his hair, scrubbing him clean. When Hannibal touches him— “And how shall I venture out into the dark? With a butter knife and what’s left of the bread, bones as weapons?”“I have never doubted your resourcefulness, Will.”“It’s not your faith I need, Hannibal. It’s my own.” There is this, the way Hannibal’s hair falls over his forehead, covering his eyes. How he pushes back those long, silvered strands. Will remembers him younger. They were both younger on the day they met.“I made a promise.”“I didn’t,” Will reminds him. Maybe Hannibal’s hands will stay clean, but what about his own? “I only promised not to kill you.”“Will.” Hannibal lifts his damp shirt from the chair and pulls it over his head, slipping his hands through the sleeves. It hangs from him. He is lean, hollow. Hannibal, in his half-damp shirt, wet from Will’s bathwater, and his perfectly disheveled hair. All he needs is a messenger bag and a to-go cup and he’d be mid-twenty something, disillusioned and distracted. They are both finding their way. They are both too old to be this lost.“It is impossible to love you,” Will says, but both of them know it’s too late, Will already does. Has, for so long.Hannibal takes a step forward. Will takes one back. The floor creaks, a sound like ache. Heartache, the pain of old bones and Will. Will turns and puts his hands on the window ledge, fingers curled under, into the crack of old paint.“Impossible and yet you do.”This brutal, violence of a man. Will closes his eyes as Hannibal steps in behind him. Smells sweat and fire smoke, the clawing reek of dollar soap and there, there is a hand just over his heart. The comforting press of Hannibal’s cheek to his own cheek.When the howling starts, Will stiffens, keeps still. Hannibal whispers into his ear. Murmurs something like shhhhh.“That wasn’t me.” But then Hannibal’s hand is over his mouth, quieting him.“There’s someone in the trees,” Hannibal replies, taking Will’s wrist in is hand and pulling him away from the window. “If we bring down the fire we’ll be dead of cold by morning.”Hannibal nods, pushes Will away from the door as he walks across the room. Goes to the fireplace and slides his hand along the mantle, pulling free long-handled knife with an even longer blade.“What are you doing?” But isn’t it obvious?Hannibal lifts his coat from the hook on the wall. “We need to know if there is a potential problem.”Will swallows. You promised, he wants to say. But he doesn’t. This is protection, not amusement. Not divinity. Not il mostro. “Be careful.”“Will you be here when I return?”There’s consideration. A moment too long, too much space between Hannibal’s question and Will’s answer. But there is an answer.“Yes,” Will says and looks over his shoulder. Abigail, a silvered shimmer of a girl, holds her fist to her chest and fades into the woodwork.#Day fades to dusk, fades into evening dark. A blackness. The fire crackles and sputters and sparks. Abigail is in the armchair, her feet tucked under, her scarf twisted in her hands. Will sits on the rickety sofa. The thing leans to the left and so he leans to the left. He dog-ears the page in the book he is reading/not reading. Abigail pushes hair from face, lifts it from her shoulders.
“You decided to stay?”
Did he? He said Yes. Yes is not forever. Not forgiveness. “Until death do us part,” he whispers and Abigail smiles, covering her mouth like she’s surprised by it.
Death is what brought them together. When he thinks of Hannibal, when he thinks of the knife in his belly, the bullet in his body, the scar on his forehead, the scar the scar the scar. When he thinks of them…He pushes up his shirt, exposing the worst of it. There is no worst, there is only Hannibal. He traces the line of the knife, its sharp and hook.
“It doesn’t help,” Abigail whispers. “Opening it doesn’t help.”
Blood stains his fingers. He digs, opening his skin, pushing inside, into fat and tissue. Muscle. Up to bone.
“Will.”
She never calls him father. But when he and Hannibal speak of her, they call her daughter.
“Will.”
He looks up. Abigail is bleeding. Blood rushes from the gash in her neck. He pushes off, a leap and dive, arms out. His arms find air and he drops to the ground. His head bounces against the hardwood and there’s stars. Spit. He slides a hand through his hair and rolls to the right, pushing up. This time there’s no blood. No river. No wading into any stream.
“Will.”
He lifts his chin.
“It’s okay,” Abigail says, safe.
“I couldn’t save you.”
“You can save him,” she whispers. Her voice faraway, like a memory, a song playing on a radio three doors down, carried along on air.
Save Hannibal. Save himself. He shakes his head, wipes a hand over his mouth. Squeezes his eyes shut and presses the heel of his palm into his chest. “I tried that once.”Did he? Or was there only ever the sharp of the blade? Was he trying to stitch the man back together or merely cut away the rot? “I told him it was beautiful.”There, on the cliffside.
“Birth is supposed to be,” she says. “But we see it as a violence.”
She is no longer bleeding. Curled up under a blanket, her scarf snug around her neck, her hair glinting auburn. The fire casts shadows. He plants a hand on the floor, tries to push them away. Tries to bring the light back. “I don’t feel reborn.”
“You can’t be reborn if you were never alive in the first place.”
“Are you saying I was —” Dead?
“You have never known yourself as well—”
“As when I’m with him.”A wisp of cool wind flutters along his nape.“Will?”He spins around, still on the floor. Hannibal stands in the doorway, the shape of him a demon, with his too long arms, the sharp of his shoulders, the knife in his hand.“Are you alright?” Hannibal does not look all right. Not right at all. The knife clatters to the floor. Hannibal collapses. Will scrambles across the floorboards, half-expecting Hannibal’s body to also disappear, become smoke, memory.
Hannibal. Hannibal. Hannibal.
Abigail screams. “He’s not breathing!”
How does she know. How can the dead know… the dead. Dead is dead and - “HANNIBAL!” Screamed raw. Screamed until there is blood in his own throat and he tugs at Hannibal’s clothing, pulling away buttons and zippers and old, worn cotton.A howling. Will lifts his head. Mournful. A death call. A howling. Will covers Hannibal’s mouth, breathes down air, filling his lungs.A gasp.His chest.Bite mark. Wound. Will tears fabric, makes a bandage, presses down as hard as he can. Presses until he feels the whole of Hannibal, bone and tissue and sinew and its his own hand in his own body and this body. “No, no, no.” Will covers Hannibal. Makes him safe. Protects him.A howling.“Cover the windows,” Will screams, but Abigail. Abigail is a ghost and he can’t do both. He can’t be here and there. He presses a kiss to to Hannibal’s forehead. Warmth. He’s still warm.Clack clack clack. The click of nails. Will pushes Hannibal’s hair from his face and unravels. Stands. The shotgun. There’s the shotgun and bullets.He knows how to load a gun. Bev taught him how to shoot without wavering. The metal is heavy. Comforting. He checks the safety and opens the front door.Yellow eyes. Blood. A panting. Blood drips from yellowed teeth.He lifts the gun. Howls into the dark and the wolf. The wolf leaps, covering an impossible distance and Will fires. The whole of the world laughs, a piercing mockery, but he lifts the gun again. Fires again. A conversation in shell and metal. The wolf yelps, twists and falls to the ground. Becomes ash. The snow burns. The world is a metronome, ticking ticking ticking. Will reloads the gun and fires and loads the gun and fires. Shells litter the dirt, the new snow.Silence.Will glances back at the cabin. There’s firelight in the windows and Abigail. Abigail stands watch.“Keep him safe,” he says.She nods.#He isn’t dressed for this. In his plaid shirts and khakis. In his fishing vest, in his latex gloves. In his proper jacket. In his suit. In his tie. In his orange jumpsuit. A uniform is an impossible, strangling thing. He isn’t dressed for this, snow up to his ankles and a low, dim sun. The dragging of a shotgun behind him, breadcrumbs. A way to mark the trail and there is also blood. Rubies glisten in the sun and snow, its crystalline forms glint and sparkle. Diamonds are forever. He made a promise. Blood drips. Not his. Trees, their branches naked of leaves sway in the low wind, crackle like witches, a secret laugh, mocking. In Russian folktales the hero goes I do not know where.
Bring back I do not know what.
Hannibal is Baba Yaga. Promising all of the things Will has ever yearned for. This is Confucius.This is his interesting time. The snow is soot-stained. Will digs his toe into it, overturns it, brings back white.“What are you doing?”A voice in the open, a voice on snow and wind and fading sun. You were halfway dead, Will thinks, as he turns around and there is Hannibal. Pale and older, marked by the time they have spent together. Will remembers his face. Smiling. Hannibal in that awful beige suit.
Don’t psychoanalyze me.
“Protecting you,” Will says, lifting the shotgun. “You were bleeding. Dead and halfway and bleeding.”“I was in bed.” Hannibal shakes his head. “You are sleepwalking.”Will looks down. Naked feet. A t-shirt. Boxer shorts. He looks up. The sky is dark and full of stars. “It was afternoon.”“Not for some time.”“I saw you bleeding on the floor.”Hannibal does a turn. Opens his coat. Rucks up his shirt. Spins again. “Not today.”“No, I-”“Will,” Hannibal says, holding out his hand. “Come home.”Home. Will you be here when I return? " I don’t remember sunset.”“Night comes,” Hannibal says, “whether we notice or not.”Will looks up. The moon is an open, silvered mouth. He brings his free hand to his stomach, checking his scars. “I’m cold.” The shotgun falls to the ground, to the snow, and then Hannibal. Hannibal is there, touching his back.“Yes,” Hannibal says, taking his hand as he leads them through field and tree, to the waiting cabin.#“Am I sick?”“Sleepwalking can be a result of stress. Fatigue.”“Should I draw a clock?” He means it as a joke, but Hannibal doesn’t smile. He merely hands Will his tea.
Abigail shakes her head and tightens her scarf. “He regrets it, you know.”
Will doesn’t know. Will thinks, sometimes, that Hannibal suffers under the weight of all the apologies he’s never made. “I don’t know,” he replies.
“Tell him,” she says, “that you forgive him.”
“But what if I don’t?”
The girl folds her arms.“You do.”
“Hrm?” Hannibal murmurs.“Nothing,” Will replies, drinking his tea. Hannibal’s found milk. Sugar. “Where did you?” He lifts the mug.“I felt it safe to make a call. I have bank accounts, accessible accounts that won’t be flagged, that won’t alert anyone who might be interested in our whereabouts.”It’s not often Will thinks about Jack. Jack without Bella. How quiet the man’s life must be now. The kindest gift they can give Jack is the belief that both he and Hannibal are dead. It’s a risk, them being together. Staying together. “I don’t want him to find us.”“It’s been long enough, Will. The cliffside provided Jack the end of our existence. The comfort of our demise and the end of that story.”Will does not feel comfort. “So our file is closed, sent to storage?”Hannibal lifts a shoulder. Neither of them can know for sure. “I’d rather a book,” he says, still on the metaphor. “Chapters end and chapters begin.”Will considers that. Endings and Beginnings. Maybe they can start again. “Hold this,” Will says.Hannibal takes the cup of tea. Takes a sip and wrinkles his nose. “How do you drink this?”“I drink it because you made it for me.” It’s easy for him to hold out his hand. A second sort of offer.Hannibal tangles their fingers together. “I will give you anything you ask.”#They leave the curtains open. Moonlight streams in, cutting a silvered line over their bedlinen, the messy, torn quilt is too short for the length of Hannibal’s body but Will is warm, curled in and around the other man, careful to tuck in what he can of the blanket’s corners.“I’d like to go where it doesn’t snow. Near the water.”“We could live on a boat,” Hannibal says, quiet enough he doesn’t disturb the dark.The house creaks. Boards and nails, or maybe it’s just Abigail. She would also prefer the sun. “I’d be good on a boat, but there’s no room for a kitchen.”“Galley,” Hannibal corrects.“Cleat, propeller and gunwale.” Not his three favourite parts of a boat, but they’ll do.“Clavicle, iliofemoral, trochanter.”“Muscle and bone?” Will shifts enough to crawl closer, get close until he’s a breath away and then his breath is on Hannibal’s skin, a kiss and teeth. A gentle, gnawing promise. “Incisor.”“Canine, I think.”Will laughs. In response there is the ghost of fingertips, a press into Will’s spine and lower. Hannibal’s nail traces the curve of him, the slope of his ass.“Not going to name it?”Hannibal slips his thumb into the cleft. “I only think to call it mine.”Will doesn’t argue— instead he lifts his body, his hips, the smallest, slightest movement. The air is cold but Hannibal. Hannibal’s touch is fire. A deep burning, an ember Will has carried for so long that his palms are scarred. Stigmata. Touched by the hand of darker god. “All of it?”“Every cell,” Hannibal says. “Skin through bone.”Will’s throat contracts. Collapses. Air is a gasp. Agreement is a nod, the scrape of his beard over rough linen, old cotton. Hannibal counts the spaces between vertebrae, the divots between the bones of Will’s spine.Will reaches back, finds Hannibal’s hand, his wrist. Pulls, drags him in and down. He sighs under the weight, under the full of Hannibal’s body and the familiar feel of Hannibal’s cock. The house moans in response, a shifting of beams and slats. Of rusted, old nails.“It has an opinion,” Will says, smiling into the mattress.“An opinion and yet so little to say.” Hannibal brushes at Will’s hair with his cheek. “Shall we shut it up? Muffle its sighs, drown out its old and tired complaints?”Should they. Should he. If Will. If Will agrees to the weight of Hannibal’s body, to boats and sunlight, there are things he will never again be able to say.
“Tell him,” she says, “that you forgive him.”
Instead. Instead Will nods and finds what he can of meat, of muscle, and digs his fingers deep and deeper until he is drowning in the feel of Hannibal, until his own cock stirs and he nods again. Nods as Hannibal reaches over the width of the bed to the drawer to the small, metal tin. To sticky wet and fingers and cleft and tracing, Hannibal’s fingers find the place where Will opens. Soften and wet and glide, a slide. Penetration answered in a groan and Hannibal. Hannibal presses himself up, the heels of his hands dig into the bed, form divots and valleys and Incisor, Will had said.Canine, was Hannibal’s response.Teeth are all that matter.All that matters is the feel of his first, one true, the only person he has ever loved, the sudden breach, the gentle rocking of the waves of the ocean and how the tide comes in, breaking against the sand in a salted white rush.When the water recedes, when the wave is swallowed again, when the sand is turned exposing shells and seaweed like rope there will be the boat and the galley.There will be the ghost of a girl and there will be forever.